Programming

Currently, the TV Academy allows seven nominees in the outstanding drama series and outstanding comedy series categories, which it bumped up from six in 2015. But since then, the number of original scripted series on TV continues to grow larger every year. According to FX’s annual count, there were nearly 500 scripted original series on broadcast, cable and online services in 2018, compared with 422 in 2015.

For the first time, Late Show with Stephen Colbert will finish the TV season as the top latenight show in the demo; he’s on track to finish about 18,000 ahead of Fallon’s in the key 18-49 age bracket, after trailing by 72,000 last season.

The back-to-back, two-episode finale of the nerdy CBS comedy’s 12-season run drew 18.5 million live viewers Thursday night to easily win the week, Nielsen said Tuesday. That helped give CBS six of the top 10 shows and an easy win of the week in primetime with an average of 6.5 million viewers. NBC averaged 4.5 million, ABC 3.8 million, Fox 1.9 million, Univision with 1.25 million, Ion Television with 1.2 million, Telemundo 1.1 million and the CW 790,000.

The Peacock remains quite proud — even without the benefit of the Super Bowl or an in-season Olympics. With the 2018-19 TV season about to close, NBC is on track to come out on top for the fifth time in six years, averaging a 1.6 rating in the coveted 18-49 demo (per “most current”/DVR-inclusive numbers). When it comes to total viewers, Super Bowl LIII host CBS was “America’s Most Watched Network” for the 11th year in a row (and 16th out of the last 17) with an average audience of 8.9 million (on par with last year).